Want to dominate your local market? Crafting a well thought out local SEO plan could be just what your business needs! With more customers turning to search engines to find local businesses, a solid local SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy isn’t just a nice thing to have – it’s essential.
In this guide, we’ll take you step by step through creating an actionable local SEO plan to ensure your business gets found by the right people at the right time. Ready to grow your local presence? Let’s jump in!
What Is a Local SEO Plan and Why Does Your Business Need One?
A Local SEO plan is a strategy that helps businesses improve their visibility in local search results. For example, if I was to search “plumber in Manchester” and a page on your website was optimised for “plumber in Manchester”, you would be likely to appear for that search term in Google.
A Local SEO plan is important as –
- Searches vary depending on location: Search results for the same queries can differ across regions and cities. For example, if you searched “plumbing services”, Google will only generate businesses based on your current location.
- Location based searches are very common: Ask yourself how many times you’ve pulled out your mobile phone and searched for “best restaurants near me“.
- People look at map packs: A local search shows a map pack filled with businesses in the local area for your choosing, usually showing their reviews as well.
In fact, 70% of customers are more likely to visit a business with an optimised Google My Business (GMB) profile than ones without! That could potentially be a whopping 70% of business you are missing out on. Moreover, 88% of consumers who conduct a local search on their mobile phone visit or call a store within a DAY!
To put it simply, when your target customers are searching in Google, you want to make sure you appear. But how do you actually start with a Local SEO plan? Don’t worry, we’ve laid all the steps out for you, so you just have to follow them.
Step 1: Conduct a Local SEO Audit
To begin your local SEO plan, you first need to conduct a Local SEO audit. I know this term sounds fancy, but believe me it’s much easier than it sounds!
Keyword Review:
Start by reviewing the main pages on your website i.e. your homepage and service/product pages to see if they have any keyword mentions of the area you operate in. For example, if I was an electrician in Liverpool, I would be looking for “electrician in Liverpool” or other keyword variations.
You can also search the keyword you want to target in Google, or use a SERP Checker, and see if your website pops up. If not, or you want to target other keywords, use our free keyword research tool to find opportunities.
Website Audit:
You can try running a speed test of your website to see how fast it loads, don’t worry, it doesn’t take long! Your looking for a load speed of under 3 seconds, otherwise your website is too slow. Us SEO’s use 3 seconds as an acceptable guideline because anything above 3 seconds increases the likelihood of visitors leaving your site.
If you’re site does take over 3 seconds to load, see here for more information on how you can speed it up!
Google My Business Profile:
“What’s a Google My Business Profile?” I hear you ask. Don’t worry, we will go more in depth on this in the next section. For now, if you do have a Google My Business set up, make sure you have your company description, services/products, and a post or two live.
Local Content Audit:
As we talked about in the section above, start to analyse your service/product page content. Does it have the service you provide along with the location in the content? Do the images on your site portray either the location you operate in or the service you provide? Would you buy something from this page if you were a customer who landed on it? This is crucial for your local SEO plan.
Citations:
We SEO’s love citations, they are like little boosts of confidence from directories that show your business website is trustworthy in the eyes of Google. And they’re relatively cheap too for the return on investment (ROI) they yield. I generally use a service such as Local Citation Services, but you can always reach out to individual directories yourself and get listed!
Customer Reviews:
Introducing the Mike Tyson for your local SEO plan – reviews. If you haven’t got any, your going to get knocked out. Think about it, if you have to decide between two businesses with thousands of 4.8 star reviews, compared to a business with three 4.6 star reviews, which one are you going to choose?
Competitor Analysis:
To conduct a competitor analysis, Google whatever keyword it is you want to target, for example “life coach Manchester”, then take note of the top 3-5 search results (don’t forget to skip the ads, they have “sponsored” written above them).
Have a look at what these competitors are doing that you are not. What do their pages look like? How many times do they mention the keyword? How does their content sound when reading it?
Local Social Media Review:
This is a nice quick one to end the list. Out of the top competitors you identified in the step beforehand, have a look at what social media they are all using. If you are not using the same, you may want to set up accounts on these platforms as you target customers will likely be congregating there.
You can use all the tools on this site to aid you with your local SEO plan. Just visit the “Tools” section above and give them a try!
The main aspect of conducting a local SEO audit is to identify gaps and opportunities your competitors may have missed.
Step 2: Your Google My Business Profile
When you search for a local business, what’s the first thing you look at? It probably looks a little like this –
This is called a “Map Pack” and this is what your business will show up in if you have set up, and optimised, your Google My Business profile. Let’s discuss how you can do the same shall we.
How to set up your Google My Business account
If you already have a Google My Business account, feel free to skip this step. If not, here’s how to set up your listing.
- Go to this URL- google.com/business.
- Click “Manage Now”.
- Enter your business name and click on “Next”.
- Enter you business address. If you don’t have a physical business, but deliver products/services, in the local area, click “I deliver goods and services to my customers” and “Hide my address”.
- Pick your business category. It is important this category is as accurate as it can be, as Google will use this to evaluate your business.
- Add you business phone number.
- Add you websites URL.
Now for the waiting game. Google will let you know, around a week later, whether your business has been verified or not. This part is out of your control so just sit back, relax, and continue with other parts of your local SEO plan.
Optimise your Google My Business Profile
All verified? Excellent!
Now it’s time to optimise your Google My Business listing. Sign into your account and click on your business. Now, the best way to fully optimise your Google My Business Profile is to just put down as much information as you can about your business. This will increase your authority in the eyes of Google. You want to make sure you –
- Use your actual business name. Don’t be susceptible to spam and call your business name the keyword you want to target, unless that actually is your business name. Google picks up on this pretty quickly.
- Write your business description. Be sure to include any Unique Selling Points your business might have i.e. 30 years in the industry, free call-outs etc.
- Add all the products/services you offer.
- Make sure your business operation hours are correct.
- Upload good quality photos, and videos if you have them, to your listing for both your service and your business.
- Upload regular blog posts to your listing to build visibility.
Another quick tip is to respond to all the reviews you receive, especially if they’re bad ones. You want to show your customers that you are active on the profile. If they see the owner responding to reviews, they are more likely to leave one themselves.
Now onto the next section of your local SEO plan – Keyword Research.
Step 3: Conduct Local Keyword Research
Remember those keywords you found from doing a Local keyword review before? Pop them into a tool like Google Keyword Planner, and see what other keywords come up. This will help you fine tune your local SEO plan to see what semantic keywords you want to add into your content.
Once you have found them, start adding them into your website content and make it look natural! I would recommend adding 1-2 keywords in every 100 words of content.
You also want to make sure the title of you page is the keyword you want to target. For example, instead of “Plumbing Service” try “Plumber in [your location]“.
Step 4: Build and Optimise Location Pages
So what should I actually include on my location pages? I’m glad you asked. In this section, we will dive a bit deeper into the science of creating a high performing location page, ensuring you have everything you need on there for your local SEO plan. Let’s get started!
Contact Information
You want to make sure that your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number) is visible on each of your service pages. Make sure your NAP always the same as well, otherwise Google will lose trust in the authenticity of your site.
All your available services/products
Make sure to list all the services you offer. If your services differ, you may also want to think about splitting pages out as you can then target more keywords. For example, if you were a drainage company selling CCTV drain surveys and drain repairs, you would want two separate pages for each of these services.
Your Location
You want to include the location of your business so your customers know how to find you. People usually place them in the footer of their site with a map, but it is up to you where you put it!
Marketing Copy
This is probably one of the most important aspects of your local SEO plan along with reviews, after all, you are trying to make a sale aren’t you? Be sure to make the content on the page informative, engaging, and persuasive. Someone has landed on this page because they lack something, and YOU have the solution. Make sure you convey that clearly.
Also include images related to your product or service. No one wants top scroll through big intimidating walls of text now do they.
Call To Actions
Great! I’m ready to buy. But wait, where is the button to contact the business or make a purchase? I can’t be bothered looking… and you just lost a sale.
Yep, it happens that fast. Include call to action buttons in various positions on your service page, otherwise your customers will not know what to do next after they’ve decided to buy. A good idea would be to add a button like “Book a Call” to the header of the site, and make the header sticky so the button is always there for the customer to click.
Reviews/Testimonials
This will turn your site into a conversion machine! As previously mentioned, reviews and testimonials are one of the most important aspects of a local SEO plan. If you do not have any reviews yet, start handing out business review cards or ask your customers to leave you an honest review.
Step 5: Create Locally Relevant Content
Creating content relevant to your local audience is essential for your local SEO plan as it will not only resonate with your target customers, but with Google as well. Your blog can be used as a canvas to show all your customers that you are an expert in your field.
Answer questions they may have about your product/service, talk about things to do in the local area, create useful guides related to your product/service.
Another good way to spread awareness through content is to keep up to date with the local community. Publish articles related to recent local news or local events. This may not get you customers in the short-term, but in the long-term, it will build awareness for your brand and help you establish yourself as authority figures in your niche.
Cheat Code
The cheat code to get all this high quality, local content out quickly is to use AI to write an outline of the article for you, so then all you have to do is re-write the article. Here is a prompt I used to use in Chat-GPT to get the outline of an article –
Act as a blogger. Write an engaging blog post for the title [TITLE]. Make it clear, unique and easily readable. Use an easy language and maximise sentence length to 20 words. Write a total of at least 650 words. The tone of voice should be light-hearted and use you-sentences. Include a minimum of 3 subheads. Optimise it towards the keyword [KEYWORD].
I would then re-write the article it gave me to include my own experiences, expertise and so forth. Google doesn’t like AI generated articles, so just use them to get some ideas flowing – you don’t want to be sat there for hours pondering what to write do you?
A little note on Intent
Before you write any piece of content, you need to understand why you are writing it. If you are a local yoga studio writing an article on “Yoga poses for beginners”, your content should cater to people who have little experience with yoga, compared to advanced yoga practitioners.
Make sure you understand your audiences needs when it comes to content, you don’t have to overthink it, just make sure it’s useful to the user.
Step 6: Build Local Citations and Backlinks
Did you know that local citations are one of the most important ranking factors, helping companies perform up to 18 times stronger in online search results?
We touched briefly on citations in a previous section, but we will delve a little deeper here.
Citations are mentions of your businesses NAP across different business directories, review or social media platforms. Citations act as backlinks which build your websites authority through the eyes of Google.
The goal here is to ensure consistency across all platforms on your businesses NAP, which enhances trust with Google. But how do you actually begin building these citations?
Reach out! It’s that simple. Try googling “[your location] business directories”. Yell.com is also a good place to start. You will find that some directories you will have to pay to get listed, but others are free.
You can also use an online service to get listed on multiple directories. Check out https://localcitationservices.com/.
Fixing Lost Citations
It would be a good idea to keep track of when you get listed on directories as they usually run out within the year and you will need to apply again. Make sure you make a note of each directory you sign up to, and on what date, in your local SEO plan. This way you will know when your link has ran out and you can re-new it easily, saving you running around like a headless chicken.
If you are unsure whether you are still listed on a directory or not, try searching you business in the directory. If it appears, hurray you’re still listed, if not, boohoo, you have to re-apply.
Another great way to build your sites authority is by getting what’s called a backlink from another local site, to yours. The best way to gain a backlink is to just create valuable content that others will link too.
If you are all out on content ideas, you can try another technique called “Guest Posting”. This involves emailing owners of other websites in a similar niche as you and asking to post and article on their website, with a link from that article back to your site. For example, if I was a company selling plant pots, I may email a gardening blog, or a lifestyle blog.
Step 7: Leverage Customer Reviews
As we have discussed, and as you may probably already know, reviews are king when it comes to business. But did you know they can also help you with your local SEO plan?
Reviews can act as powerful signals to Google that your business is credible and trustworthy, which can lead to better rankings.
Tips on responding to reviews
Responding to a customers review shows that you genuinely care about your customers. Here are a few tips on responding to reviews, we’ll start with positive reviews shall we –
Positive Reviews
- Thank the reviewer for their kind words.
- Use the reviewers name when responding, along with friendly language.
- Highlight what you did to make the customer happy i.e. “we’re glad we were able to help you with…”
- Ask a related question to probe a further response.
- Invite them to reach out again if they need any further help.
Negative Reviews
- Thank the reviewer for their feedback.
- Apologise for their negative experience with your product/service.
- Ask for more details and outline the situation in a positive manner.
- Thank them again for their patience and understanding.
If you are having trouble getting your customers to leave a review of your business, try printing out review cards and handing them to your customers after you have delivered the product or service.
Or, if you really want to turn it up a notch, subscribe to a software, such as Social Pilot, that will automatically ask your customers for a review and organise all your reviews for you across different platforms.
Step 8: Track, Measure, and Refine Your Local SEO Plan
What get’s measured, get’s managed. It’s time to track!
Tools for your Local SEO Plan
Connect your website to Google Analytics and begin tracking your key metrics! This includes the following –
- Total & Organic Users
- Key Events (calls, contact forms, emails)
- Bounce Rate
- Average duration per session
- Keyword rankings
Most of these you can just search for in the top bar of Google Analytics. If you haven’t already set up your website with Analytics, there is a helpful article on how to do so here.
Two of the best all around SEO tools out there for keyword research and other SEO tricks are Ahrefs and SEMrush. There is debate as to which is better, but personally I prefer Ahrefs as I find it simple to use.
Another emerging tool, primarily for tracking, I have also used is Wincher, which gives more in-depth tracking and on-page analysis.
All these tools listed, except Google Analytics, are paid tools, although offer free versions. As a local business owner, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Keyword Planner should do for now, unless you want a more in-depth campaign.
Adapting Your Strategy
Overtime, you will notice that your data seems to go one way over another. You may find the vast majority of your users are women over men, or your most popular product isn’t what you thought it would be.
All this data is absolute gold! Maybe release another version of your popular product/service, or target your marketing copy more towards women rather than men.
Whatever the analysis shows you, be sure to adapt your local SEO plan accordingly. Your customers will thank you for it!
Conclusion
A well executed local SEO plan can transform how your business connects with your local customers. By following these steps, you’ll improve your visibility, build trust with your audience, and ultimately drive more traffic and sales.
Remember, local SEO is an ongoing process – monitor your results, adapt to changes, and stay consistent. Ready to take your business to the next level? Start creating your local SEO plan today!
